Imperatives

I was thinking back to our group's PD last class and feeling pretty good about it. That said, in the final section in which we discussed leadership imperatives that A Whole New Mind clue us into, our suggestions mostly had to do with relating to people in our organization. The real challenge for us (and in my mind the thing that will actually help the 6 senses to "solve" the problem of the the Three A's) is how we foster these aptitudes in our students.

I'm going to tackle this from the primary education perspective since that's my forte. P-5 students are dripping with desire to play. We see it when they run at recess, play odds-and-evens in the hallway in line, and run home to their video games after school. Likewise, design is with them quite a bit at first (though it tapers off by grade 5). I'll admit, I don't know if any of them are much concerned with meaning (perhaps a blessing of youth is that the young think they'll live forever and so meaning is less relevant). Story is huge with all of them. Even in my darkest days as a failing language arts teacher I could always count on our read-aloud time to be engaging and successful. Empathy would help a lot, and you can really tell the kids who have it and who don't. I think symphony is one of the most important things to being successful these days and we need to start early with kids (I hear way too

often when we add up measurements in my science lab "But this is science, not math!?).

One possible answer I've seen being researched while searching for articles (and I had read about it excitedly before while at Baylor) is the MUVE (Multi-User Virtual Environment). We saw an example in Austin with Second Life. While many researchers are working to create learning spaces in Second Life, some organizations are creating unique MUVEs of their own. The most interesting one I've discovered is called Quest Atlantis:

It has a very Second Life feel obviously, but it seeks to combine learning

with Play, Story, and Symphony by actually situating participating students in a narrative regarding repairing the lost knowledge of the City of Atlantis. It really unfolds a lot like a video game. When you first get there certain characters guide you to talk to other characters to help you understand the fundamentals of the world and how to interact with it. As you go you get little clues about a much larger problem (Atlantis is in big trouble because of arrogant leadership and only intelligent young people searching for knowledge can help...there's some empathy) but of course you have to complete small tasks along the way before the whole story really unfolds. This is classic video game stuff where the world guides you through scaffolded quests and the whole time a larger picture of the eventual goal starts to unravel through small hints and discoveries.

They're still working to perfect the curriculum situated behind the world and its narrative but its an interesting way to connect to kids who are comfortable moving around in a digital landscape and interacting with both real and computer characters to learn more and solve problems.

Really interesting stuff BUT a major drawback as I see it is

the fact that the content is largely static, being created by an understaffed group at a university in Indiana. It will have a hard time competing with the huge staff at Blizzard keeping World of Warcraft running. Competition aside though, while it acquaints students with aptitudes like Story and Design, in the end they are consumers, not producers and users of these senses.

I think a better answer (and we're still a ways off from this in regards to the necessary programs and infrastructure to carry it out) is to let the students build the game world themselves. It's Quest Atlantis meets Web 2.0. By teaching them the fundamentals of programming and design, allowing them to work collaboratively in person and over the net, and building a tech support backbone that can help fill in the gaps when their technical knowledge is less than their designs, we can

start letting the kids build the MUVE.

This would allow them to take ownership of their creations and their learning, engage in diverse communication and problem-solving challenges, and foster their understanding of not just standard math/science/LA/SS curriculum but also of the technical and design aspects that go into building such projects.

Sounds pretty pie-in-the-sky but it could happen.

People at MIT have already built a simplified programming suite called Scratch that really helps students visualize and control the process behind generating computer programs. I've worked with it on my own a bit and it's really an amazing tool. I think if I had some time I could teach a class to use it effectively.

As educational leaders a major imperative is for us to support new methodologies and pedagogies for learning that transcend the traditional factory model. High-stakes testing still looms over us as a detractor but remember the lessons of Hooray For Difendoofer Day! If it's done right, non-traditional teaching practices can still prepare students for tests...but also much more. It just takes brave leaders to free the students and teachers underneath them to try new approaches and work autonomously. Just like Pink said in the video we saw, it would likely produce better results and happier people anyway.